Zitat des Tages von Theodore Bikel:
On the stage you're there, it's live. There's a beginning, a middle, an end. When something is funny you hear it right away.
Despite a large body of work in films, TV, theatre and concerts, I am viewed by many as a Jewish artist. I do not resent the label, except for the fact that I disapprove of labels in general.
You learn more from the flops than from the hits.
I'm exceedingly proud of being an actor, but I never recommend it to anyone.
Every actor wants to direct.
But there is a difference here: When Jewish children are murdered, Arabs celebrate the deed. The death of an Arab child is no cause for celebration in Israel.
I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.
Right up to the middle of this century all perceptions of the world around us were delivered via the bookshelf or the paper route.
For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.
I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.
You don't really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.
We live in a world of guns, bombs and terror. To conquer hate seems a nigh-impossible task.
No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.
No doubt unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed into being by mere declarations.
I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.
By showing hunger, deprivation, starvation and brutality, as well as endurance and nobility, documentaries inform, prod our memories, even stir us to action. Such films do battle for our very soul.
I prefer to choose which traditions to keep and which to let go.
I know for certain of only one commandment, one obligation, that God imposes upon us, and that is to be compassionate toward other human beings.
After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not - or were not permitted to - read, were given sermons by the few who could.
No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.
I glory in the fact that a human being has multiple talents and exercises them all with a degree of integrity and artistic proficiency. That's what I do.
I am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family.
You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.
I remain convinced that I can be a true universalist only when I am a better Jew.
If I have one vanity wish, it would be to direct. It's the only thing I haven't done yet that I would like to.
I refuse to do shows that are narrowly constructed, that appeal to only one sentiment. I do a lot of Jewish material in front of non-Jews and a lot of non-Jewish material in front of Jews on the simple theory that the non-Jews are entitled to a glimpse of a Jewish world and the Jews are entitled to a glimpse of the world.
The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.
Audiences are audiences.
When something is moving you get that intake of breath and that stillness from the audience.
I am not a specialist but a general practitioner in the world of the arts.
In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.
What moves me is neither ethnocentric pride nor sectarian arrogance. I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures. But it is mine.
We Jews have a special attachment to the Book. The study of page after page in tomes yellowing with age was obligatory.
I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sing about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.
I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures or that the Jewish song is better than the song of my neighbor.
Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival?